I need an affordable gaming PC.

The thing is Ihave no idea what I'm doing.

I have the sticky open in another tab but haven't got very far into it yet.

Is it really not possible to shell out $5-700 bones and get a quality gaming PC?

So its really that easy just to build a PC?

I have absolutely no idea here.

I'm just looking to have some fun gaming and want to venture away from consoles for the first time.

So a dumbass like myself could figure it out then?

All the same does anyone have any suggestions for prebuilt rigs in my price range? If for nothing more than comparison and what I can expect to get.

I really don't even know what $500 will get you in the PC world. Will spending $200 more even make a real difference? Should I just say frick it and buy one of the new gen consoles for that money?

I'm really as newbish as a newb can be here.

I guess ultimately my question is will my price range even get me something worth having?

Or am I going to have to spend more money than I'm willing to in order to get something that is fairly decent?

I'm not willing to go over $700 monitor and all (although I could use my TV as a monitor for a little while I guess... Right?).

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I guess ultimately my question is will my price range even get me something worth having?

Or am I going to have to spend more money than I'm willing to in order to get something that is fairly decent?

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For the computer itself (Tower), you can make an excellent gaming PC for $700. Pre-built is going to use the exact components that you can buy for a cheaper price.

It all seems daunting at first, but when you really look at it, you're screwing the the mobo into your case, and plugging everything else into place. It's so much easier than it seems.

Read up on the different parts, components, peripherals. You'll be surprised at how quickly you learn everything and how much fun it becomes shopping for parts.

Enjoy the building process. Pretty soon, you'll treat it like your car and start to customize things, buy better parts, etc...

Don't touch that PC with a 10 foot pole

Ah shite, i was trying to save some cash

Thanks for the honest opinions guys

What about 500gb macbook pro? I heard that i can install windows on my mac with bootcamp.

For a gaming PC at your budget, it's actually better for a novice to build rather than buy. Because with an off-the-shelf PC, what you'll end up doing is buying something labeled as a "gaming" PC but is in reality a dumpster fire.

I'll use iBuyPower as an example, since those are generally the cheapo gaming PCs you'll see online. Let's say your budget is somewhere between $500 and $600, and you come across this fine piece of hot garbage:



So, cool it has an overclocked pentium. Not a bad CPU for a budget gaming build actually. And 8GB of RAM is perfect, and the hard drive is meh but pretty standard.

Oh, but what's this? This here dedicated graphics card, the R7-250. Wow it has 2GB of vram. I wonder how it performs at decent settings??

Oh, it gets 20 FPS in Assassin's Creed IV? About 30 in Battlefield 4? It can't even ht 60FPS in BF4 at low quality? 30FPS in Metro Last Light at LOW quality? Well shite.


Here's what you get if you build it yourself and pirate Windows like the rest of us:

PCPartPicker part list: LINK
Price breakdown by merchant: LINK /

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor ($69.97 @ NCIX US)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($28.65 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus H81M-D PLUS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($74.70 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: HIS Radeon R9 280 3GB IceQ OC Video Card ($184.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Rosewill Hive 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $557.26
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-23 13:03 EDT-0400


The graphics card in the build above performs maybe 3 times as fast.

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Pilot Tiger

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I only pirate in that my current windows 7 disk has been used on about 7 different PCs.